Smart photo frame company Skylight is launching a new version of its Skylight Calendar, a smart family calendar. The Skylight Cal Max works identically to the current model but has a sleeker, updated design plus a whopping 27-inch screen. It’s available for preorder today starting at $599 and will ship in June, according to the company.
Technology
My new favorite way to manage my family’s calendars is getting bigger
The Cal Max almost doubles the size of the existing 15-inch Skylight Calendar, which is dedicated to showing multiple calendars in a familiar layout and syncing with online services to keep everything up to date. An enhanced 27-inch touchscreen display with a higher resolution (2560 x 1440 QHD compared to 1920 x 1080 HD), provides more space and better quality for easily seeing everyone’s schedules at a glance.
A new etched anti-glare screen and interchangeable frames are designed to help the device fit in better with your home decor. Options will include a classic white or black frame and a shadow box frame in aluminum and charcoal. The frames can be swapped out if you want to change things up and will go on sale in June when the device ships. The shadow box option adds $129 to the cost of the calendar.
I’ve been testing the current 15-inch version of the Skylight Calendar — which has the same features, just a smaller, boxier design and no anti-glare screen — and have so far found it to be the best solution I’ve tested for having one place everyone in the household can see and manage all the schedules.
Over the years, I’ve tried a lot of solutions to this problem, including giant dry-erase wall calendars, digital calendars built into my fridge, smart speakers reading out my kids’ schedules for the day, and setting notifications on their smartphones for events. But for various reasons (too much upkeep, lack of support for one calendar service or another, being too easy to ignore), none of these have worked reliably.
However, since I’ve propped the Skylight Calendar on my breakfast counter in full view of the family as they eat each morning, we’ve had significantly more success keeping our schedules straight. While smart displays like the Echo Show can show your calendar, the trick with Skylight that works for us is that it just shows the calendar — all the time.
This is not a multipurpose smart display, like an Echo Show or Nest Hub, which means no one can watch Teen Titans Go! on it instead of reviewing their day’s events. It’s a dedicated device for your calendar. There are a few other related features — chore charts, meal planning, and to-do lists — but the calendar is the main event. You can also have a photo screensaver if you like, although that requires a $39 annual subscription after the first year.
Beyond visibility, another feature I like about Skylight Calendar is that you can edit and add events right on the device’s touchscreen. You can also scroll through the day and week and see everyone’s calendars simultaneously. The interface looks a lot like the Google Calendar web interface and similarly allows for color coding for different calendars.
Skylight works with most major services — I’ve successfully imported Google, Apple, and Outlook calendars into it (Yahoo and Cozi are also supported) — or you can create your own calendars using its service and also manage them on Skylight’s smartphone app.
While the 15-inch, $300 model I’ve been testing can show five to seven days and about an eight-hour day in time slots, I can see the larger version being helpful for bigger families or those still in that stage of multiple after-school activities.
The sleeker look appeals to me, too; I wouldn’t want to wall mount the model I’m testing. It’s too bulky, and the screen can be distracting (even with auto-brightness enabled). The 27-inch would be too big for my kitchen counter. You can only wall mount it anyway, but mounted vertically you’d be able to see the whole day at once, and the anti-glare screen could make for a better photo frame when not in use.
At $599, Cal Max is pricey, and as there’s a 10-inch version for $159.99 and the 15-inch is $299.99 with the same functionality, you’re paying a lot more for just the bigger screen and nicer look. However, Skylight says that the upgraded hardware will enable new software features coming later this year. That worries me a bit. Based on my time with the original device, its simplicity is its best feature — too much more functionality, and it could lose that excellent focus.
The Skylight Cal Max is available to preorder now for $599 or $629 for the shadow box frame option. It will begin shipping to customers in June.
Technology
It’s amazing how good Alienware’s $350 OLED monitor is
I’ve recommended several OLED gaming monitors to readers over the years, and I’ve finally taken my own advice to buy one. Alienware’s new 27-inch 1440p QD-OLED has all the features that I want and a low $350 price that was too tempting to ignore.
The AW2726DM model has five things that make it stand out for the price: a 1440p QD-OLED screen with lush contrast, a fast 240Hz refresh rate, a semi-glossy screen coating to enhance details, a low-profile design without flashy RGB LEDs, and a great warranty (three years with coverage for burn-in).
I’ve been using Alienware’s new monitor for a couple days, and I’ve already spent hours with it playing Marathon. It was my first opportunity to see Bungie’s new first-person extraction shooter in its full HDR glory, and I can never go back. Switching on HDR wasn’t automatic, though it already looked so much better than my IPS panel without being activated.
Enabling it transformed how Marathon looked for the better, but made everything else about the OS look pretty washed-out. It’s a Windows issue, not an Alienware issue. It’s easy to enable HDR every time I launch a game and disable it afterward with the Windows + Alt + B keyboard shortcut, but unfortunately triggers HDR for all connected displays. This includes my IPS monitor that imbues everything with a terrible gray hue when HDR is on. So, using the system settings is the best way to adjust HDR for just the QD-OLED.
I landed on this QD-OLED after having spent a ton of time researching pricier models. The unanimous takeaway from reviewers was that LG’s Tandem RGB WOLED panels are some of the brightest out there, but also tend to exhibit lousy gray uniformity in dark scenes. QD-OLED monitors, on the other hand, offer slightly better contrast than WOLED and don’t suffer from those same uniformity issues. However, blacks sometimes appear as dark purple in bright rooms on QD-OLED panels, meaning they’re ideal for rooms that don’t have a bunch of light bouncing around.
There’s no perfect choice, and honestly I got tired of doing research, so I jumped in with the cheapest OLED. I’m glad that I did. Shopping for an OLED gaming monitor can be hard, but it can also be this easy. AOC makes a model that’s discounted to $339.99 at the time of publishing, and its specs are comparable.
As expected, the AW2726DM isn’t a cutting-edge monitor. Its QD-OLED panel isn’t as fast or as bright as some other pricier options, and it doesn’t have USB ports for connecting accessories. Considering its low price, it’s easy for me to overlook those omissions. I’d have a much harder time accepting them in a pricier display.
The fact that I mostly use my computer for text-based work at The Verge is what prevented me from upgrading to an OLED monitor. My 1440p IPS monitor is bright, it’s good at showing text clearly, and it has a fast refresh rate for gaming. Alienware’s QD-OLED is less bright, and some might be bothered by how text looks (I have to really squint to see the slight fringing from this QD-OLED’s subpixel layout). But I have a life outside of work, which includes playing a lot of PC games. That’s the slice of myself I bought this monitor for, and I’m so happy I did.
Photography by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge
Technology
Michael and Susan Dell surpass $1 billion in donations backing AI-driven hospital project
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Billionaire Michael Dell and his wife, Susan Dell, have become the first donors to give more than $1 billion to the University of Texas at Austin, funding a massive new medical research campus and hospital system powered by artificial intelligence.
The couple’s latest investment includes a $750 million gift to help build the UT Dell Medical Center, a planned “AI-native” hospital expected to open in 2030 as part of a more than 300-acre advanced research campus.
University officials said the project will integrate research, clinical care and advanced computing to improve early disease detection, personalize treatment and expand access to care in the rapidly growing Austin region.
The Dells’ support builds on decades of contributions to UT, including funding for its medical school, scholarships and research programs.
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Michael Dell and Susan Dell attend the Breakthrough Prize ceremony as they become the first to donate more than $1 billion to the University of Texas at Austin. ( Craig T Fruchtman/WireImage)
“By bringing together medicine, science and computing in one campus designed for the AI era, UT can create more opportunity, deliver better outcomes, and build a stronger future for communities across Texas and beyond,” Michael Dell and Susan Dell said.
The gift ranks among the largest in the history of higher education, alongside major contributions like Phil Knight’s $2 billion pledge to Oregon Health & Science University and Michael Bloomberg’s $1.8 billion donation to Johns Hopkins University.
The new UT Dell Medical Center will be developed in collaboration with MD Anderson Cancer Center, integrating cancer care into a system designed to connect prevention, diagnosis and treatment.
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The University of Texas at Austin campus at sunset. (iStock)
“We will deliver better outcomes for patients by providing research-driven cancer care that is precise, compassionate and hope-filled,” Peter WT Pisters, president of UT MD Anderson, said.
Officials said the facility will be built from the ground up to incorporate AI, rather than retrofitting older infrastructure — an approach they say could transform how hospitals operate.
Independent experts have cautioned that AI in health care can introduce risks if not carefully validated. A widely cited study published in the journal Science by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Chicago found that a commonly used healthcare algorithm underestimated the needs of Black patients due to biased training data, highlighting broader concerns about equity in AI-driven systems.
The project also includes funding for undergraduate scholarships, student housing and the Texas Advanced Computing Center, where officials are developing one of the nation’s most powerful academic supercomputers.
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Artificial intelligence technology is expected to play a key role in diagnosis and patient care at the planned UT Dell Medical Center. (iStock)
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said the investment will help position the state as a national leader in healthcare innovation.
“Texas already dominates in technology, energy and business, and now we will further cement our leadership in health care innovation as well,” Abbott said.
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The university said it plans to break ground on the medical center later this year and has launched a broader campaign to raise $10 billion over the next decade.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Technology
SpaceX cuts a deal to maybe buy Cursor for $60 billion
SpaceX and Cursor are now working closely together to create the world’s best coding and knowledge work AI.
The combination of Cursor’s leading product and distribution to expert software engineers with SpaceX’s million H100 equivalent Colossus training supercomputer will allow us to build the world’s most useful models.
Cursor has also given SpaceX the right to acquire Cursor later this year for $60 billion or pay $10 billion for our work together.
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